


Accent and Memory

by tBrilli4ntD4rkness



Category: Denice Frohman, Original Work, The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: A Pinch of Angst, But mostly sweet and soft, Durin Family Feels, Dwarf Culture & Customs, Family Feels, Female Fundin Farinul, Found Poetry, Gen, Heavily inspired by Accents by Denice Frohman, Khuzdul, Parent-Child Relationship, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-13 07:33:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29274753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tBrilli4ntD4rkness/pseuds/tBrilli4ntD4rkness
Summary: “The heart is a fickle and foolish thing,” he replied instead. “I cannot afford to trust my own. Not when wisdom is firm, and so definitively defies it.”Balin laughed, and with such mirth that he startled the king for a moment, and caused him to worry that he might have been misheard.“Oh, what nonsense that is,” the old dwarf responded good-naturedly. “It’s quite the opposite. How else could it be that the passage of time might wipe the memory of a person from your mind so cleanly that even their face may one day be obscured from you, yet it is your heart which never grows tired of missing them?“Did you know, I quite forgot my mother’s name the other day, and I very nearly had to ask my brother for it before it came to me all of a sudden. Still, I cannot eat lamb without wishing it were made by her recipe, and every sunrise I see seems hardly more than a gentle shadow of the warmth she once brought me. She brings it to me still, though she has been gone a century yet. Love is not a physical thing. It is not so frail.”--In the Half-Light of the Canyon, Chapter 17
Relationships: Balin & Dwalin & Fundin (Tolkien), Balin & Dwalin (Tolkien), Dwalin & Fundin (Tolkien)
Kudos: 1





	Accent and Memory

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [In the Half-Light of the Canyon](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23239603) by [trainthief](https://archiveofourown.org/users/trainthief/pseuds/trainthief). 



> Based on canon dates, Dwalin would have been born two years after the sack and subsequent fall of Erebor (2770, third age), and Balin would perhaps barely remember the mountain (born 2763). Fundin died the same year as Thorin's brother Frerin, in 2799, about nine years after the battle of Azanulbizar (2790, when Thror was killed). This would have been at the end of the War of the Dwarves and Orcs, and quite possibly during the Battle of Nanduhirion (which seems like a strangely elvish name for such a thing).  
> All this means that by the time the Battle of Five Armies and reclamation of Erebor happens in 2940-2941, Fundin would have been dead for more than 140 years. That's a very long time to be missing your parent as a young adult while your entire clan is wandering and displaced from your ancestral mountain.  
> Additionally, there is a pattern every generation between the Durins of the main line and the cousin line beginning with Borin, wherein the descendants of Borin are born 15-20 years after that generation's kingsline Durin. (Thrór with Farin; Thráin with Fundin and Gróin; Thorin with Balin and Dwalin.) Although both Fundin and Gróin had their first sons when they were around a century old, Gróin lives quite a bit longer, within only a couple decades of the reclamation of Erebor.  
> [You may follow if you would like to confirm.](https://www.google.com/search?q=line+of+durin&rlz=1CAWPBA_enUS941&sxsrf=ALeKk01-FnOheGk1stlm6JYItGMLqZutMw:1613941778049&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjlk_nS8fvuAhXEVs0KHbbpCZ8Q_AUoAXoECBQQAw&biw=1100&bih=642#imgrc=DQfGdUjAQ9zBbM)
> 
> As for how I insubstantially support my use of Fundin as female here-- there is a reason. Of the nine sibling sets I know of from canon (between the Company and the Line of Durin appendix), nearly all of them have some sort of rhyming structure. In fact, the only siblings that _don't_ display this pattern are Fundin and Gróin, the debatable case of Dáin I and Borin (which may be another example of what I'm about to hypothesize), and Thorin & Frerin with their sister, Dís. Dís, who is the only named female dwarf by Tolkein, and whose name most clearly does not rhyme with her brothers'. Obviously, the difference between Fundin and Gróin is much slimmer, as they both at least share the -in suffix of the Durins, but I claim that as the possibility that perhaps the reason these siblings' names are not an obvious rhyming pair is because they are not _meant_ to be.  
> Thank you, and good time-of-day. I shall step off my fantheory soapbox now.
> 
> Hovertext for all Khuzdûl, or translations in the endnotes for mobile readers.

His amad always held her accent  
like her favorite pair of brass knuckles  
well-worn, well cared-for,  
and strong enough to bust a busybody’s nose.  
And, like those brass knuckles,  
she passed it on down to him and his brother  
in a thick, brisk brogue  
Caught between her two good hands  
and held there until it began to slip into theirs.

She’d learned syllables of Westron  
under a too-bright sky  
and chewed them up  
and spit them back  
until they didn’t all sound the same anymore  
And the sky inside her mouth was  
dark and lit with stars,  
flavored by the tongue of Khazad.

Sometimes she spoke the west-east tongue  
just like she used to dance, ni ‘abad,  
before the fire and the dragon  
and the life where there was no time left for dancing.  
When they were in danger  
she spun her orders like daggers,  
rapid and unflinching  
Even though her tongue could never quite lie flat enough  
to give up the music of Khuzdûl  
between the harpsichord keys of her teeth.

Sometimes she spoke hushed  
so all her words blended together  
in the raids and festivals of a  
people that didn’t use to know quiet  
But it snuck up on them  
and spilled out  
until there was too much of it  
Too many voices that would never  
dance again,  
never speak with the fire of salsa  
and the clap of wind id’abadirak.

But always when she spoke,  
words pushing up against one another  
like the abutments of a battlement,  
decorated with firm lines  
and the last of the family gold,  
her accent was a stubborn compass  
pointing back to their ancestry,  
pointing forwards with a people  
whose hands were all they had.

So when he helps his brother with the housekeeping  
and hums a song she remixed while  
waiting for her common-voice to arrive,  
he remembers the way her lips could only barely  
stretch themselves around sound in her excitement.  
Or when, out in the markets of Men,  
he hears the familiar music of  
an accent like hers  
an accent like his  
and then a meeting with a stranger in a  
foreign crowd becomes a family reunion.  
Accents remind him,  
a letter from his mother  
of all they have won, all they have lost.

He remembers the smell of the spices  
she used when cooking their meat,  
runs a finger over the  
braided keychain of her hair  
that is all he has of her presence  
outside his mind.  
The quiet of the mountain is too still  
and the thrushes don't sing  
and there are no ravens outside  
in the Khagal'abbad where Thorin's Halls lie.  
But there are his people,  
his brother and brothers-in-arms,  
and the memory of his mother.

**Author's Note:**

> amad - mother  
> Khagal'abbad - the blue mountains, or Ered Luin  
> Khazad - the Dwarves  
> Khuzdûl - “Dwarvish”, language of the dwarves  
> id’abadirak - on the mountainside  
> ni 'abad - inside the mountain
> 
> (I find the name "Westron" to be a bit ironic, considering that "west of the Misties" used to be pretty far inland on Beleriand. But only the elves really remember that.)  
> Khuzdûl from Dwarrow Scholar and this beautiful [Neo-Khuzdûl translation of I See Fire](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0Ak93JgJeQ).
> 
> And if anyone would like to know how to create mouseover text, the html is:  
> (p-tag open)  
> (less-than)span title="I am hovering over the text"(greater-than) This is the text I want to have a mouseover.(span-tag closed)  
> (p-tag closed)


End file.
